"The gospel is better than unconditional love." Agree, or disagree?
Recently, I have been listening to a sermon series by C. J. Mahaney entitled, "Idol Factory." The series is all about idolatry, how subtle and pervasive it is in all of our hearts, how to recognize it, and how the Gospel is the solution. While reading through the outline, which I found after snooping around online at the Sovereign Grace website, I stumbled upon a startling quote. It said, "The gospel is better than unconditional love."
Without context, this statement might seem perplexing. What does that mean? At this point in the message, C. J. was responding to false notions within the Christian world which teach that our basic problems relate to our felt-needs rather than to sin and idolatry.
This view sees us as "empty love cups." Our problem is deprivation. Someone deprived us of the love we need, and that is why have these problems. We need affirmation, not repentance. Our problem is that we are empty and need to be filled up. We would not do such bad things if our self-esteem was not so low. Our love cups are empty.
The view which Mahaney advocates, from Scripture, is that our deepest human issue is depravity. We are depraved, not deprived. Without belittling the pain of abusive or neglectful relationships, Mahaney makes the case that our biggest problem is idolatry. We are driven by idols of the heart: things, ideas, loves, people, places, desires -often good things simply taken too far, desired too much. They are things which functionally replace God and from which we seek the things that God, in Christ, alone can ultimately provide, such as security, hope, joy, identity, refuge, and satisfaction. As John Calvin said, "the evil in our desires lies usually not in what we want but that we want it too much." They take the place of God, ruling our lives, becoming the foundation for our joy, our bastion of refuge in times of trouble, the ultimate motivators for how we live, and the hidden causes behind those nasty repetitive sins we never seem to gain much ground on.
As far as needs go, Mahaney lists what our true heart-needs are. We need the gospel. We need its truth, and we need to believe it. We need to see ourselves in terms of moral culpability before God rather than just a series of "felt-needs," because, as the Bible describes us, we are not morally neutral creatures with a few personal hang-ups. We are creatures whose most fundamental problem and need relates to our Creator and our sinful heart-aversion to Him.
With the "love cup" view of human need, the gospel becomes reduced essentially to "God loves you." Idols like self-esteem and self-affirmation are legitimized into "real needs," and therefore the gospel becomes a tool to meet those needs. It tells us that someone really cares about us, that He cares for us "thiiiiiiiis much." He loves or accepts us "unconditionally," as many say. The problem is that this view turns the gospel into a means to serve our idols and dares to make Jesus Christ submit as the chief minister of them.
But the true gospel, Mahaney says, is actually not about "unconditional love" at all. It is about what he calls "contraconditional" love. It is better than unconditional love. It is full acceptance because of the perfection and sin-atoning work of Jesus Christ. It is not a fuzzy, milk-toasty kind of affirming hug with a "I’ll forget about all the things you’ve done." It is about a blood-bought, fully satisfied, Christ-established state of favor and blessing that cannot be tarnished. It takes seriously and meets our real needs, not legitimized idols. In fact, it casts those idols to the ground and enthrones Christ as our hope, refuge, trust, security, significance, and joy.
Mahaney notes:
"God never accepts me ’as I am.’ He accepts me ’as I am in Jesus Christ.’ The center of gravity is different. The true Gospel does not allow God’s love to be sucked into the vortex of the soul’s lust for acceptability and worth in and of itself. Rather, it radically decenters people – what the Bible calls ’fear of the Lord’ and ’faith’ – to look outside themselves."
Our most basic need is not met by obtaining more affirmation and attention on self. It is met as we lose self in the glorious and beautiful Savior who is external to us.